Naughty Dog did it again with Uncharted: A Thief's End.

The Uncharted franchise has been a wonderful ride over the last 9 years. Each game was all the best parts of a playable movie - intense action, funny quips, likable characters and fast gameplay. Each game was something of a technical feat, usually bringing top-notch animation together with the best motion capture and great voice talent. Naughty Dog always adds details in the environment, and goes the extra mile in having storylines that are easy to follow.

Uncharted 1234 graphical evolution over two consoles.

Uncharted 4 might not have the crystal clearest graphics that other PS4 titles have, but the signature Naughty Dog detail is there. From the dynamic mud/rain splattering that dries in the sun to the the always-different bullet holes in the windshield of your truck earned in a fight that stay through the entire segments of the game. From climbing onto your brother's shoulders when trying to pass him dangling from a cliff to reaching your hand out to touch something as your character is sneaking around in a dark mansion, this game has some great touches.

Three blokes in a truck in Madagascar, shootin the breeze.

One of the newest details is when a character is telling a story during one of the free range parts, if you get out of the truck in the middle of the story and come back to the vehicle, one character will prompt the other, "What were you saying?" and pickup where the story left off. The speaking animations are actually one of the worst parts - games have been shaping character mouths for a long time now, and this game doesn't seem to do that very well.

C'mon Sully, help a brother out!

The characters are fun and vibrant in their 4th appearance, and it's nice that neither of the two main female characters are solely eye-candy. Elena very clearly keeps Nathan grounded, saves his life, and kicks ass during her stealth parts. Nadine Ross is a ruthless mercenary general who provides the muscle to main antagonist, but has her limits.  The other new character to the story, Sam Drake, is even more of a knucklehead than his brother Nate. However, despite both of them being reckless and wild troublemakers, the Drakes are very educated in their history. The brothers are great to watch interact and solve puzzles, but one of my favorite dynamics is Sully and Nadine. They had a past that may or may not have been romantic, but she still beats the shit out of Nate and Sam, and Sully isn't willing to intervene. It's pretty selfish, but interesting that Sully probably doesn't want to experience what it's like to resist Nadine Ross.

In terms of trophies, I did the platinum trophy over about 2.5 weeks and maybe 40 hours total. The first time through the story, I soaked up the graphics, had little difficulty with puzzles, and took liberties with gunplay in about 15 hours. My second playthrough was on the hardest difficulty, where I did 3/4ths of the game mostly in stealth and picked up missed collectibles. Then, I discovered that after you beat the game once, you can unlock bonuses like ultra powerful weapons any time, use them and still get the trophy for beating it on Crushing. My last playthrough was the 6 hour speedrun, which I did in one 5h45m sitting.

Sorry, Nate's fingers, I have a screenshot to take!

The Uncharted franchise is such an easy recommend for anyone who has ever held a controller, and my non-gamer girlfriend definitely enjoyed watching me play for the gorgeous graphics, compelling cutscenes, and well-written characters. I'm glad that Naughty Dog is done with the series, and hope that they develop a game in a space or fantasy setting, though I'll pretty much play and enjoy anything with their name on it at this point. Bring it on, Naughty Dog!

For the record of frugality, I sold this game for a cool $35 after I beat it, having pre-ordered it for $48 through Amazon.

Frugality update: double-ice backfire edition!

Not everyone orders 60 shots, but 30 doubles per month isn't unreasonable.

I've been trying to keep it on the cheap, but this lifestyle has its challenges. I'll say the first and foremost is probably being a little too loud on other peoples' spending. I've got to keep it to advocating the lifestyle and trying not to be too judgmental. A few of the people around me work 2 jobs, some even make double what I do, and others live with either roommates or parents. Despite the larger cashflow, I know they live paycheck to paycheck, driving everywhere, paying for coffee, rarely cooking at home, and wearing the big name brands. I should just say "Must be nice," and carry on investing $200-400 per month. But boy is it hard to bite my tongue knowing that the first hour of their shift is what pays for those two Starbucks drinks that start and end their days. However, just because I don't spend recklessly doesn't mean I don't get suckered every once in a while.

Don't pretend you didn't know this picture was coming...

Goodwill had a 1/2 price green tag sale, so this 
bad boy was $3.50!

Let me start by saying I moved to a new apartment! My income flies so close to the federal poverty level that I'm able to get my rent subsidized so that it equates only 50% of my salary. I tapped my network of friends to get the whole apartment furnished for about $150. $100 of that went to a really nice old leather couch, and the rest went to filling the gas tank of a friend who picked up a table, armchair, bookshelf, dresser and tv stand from an estate giveaway. Then, after work, I walked a mile to the local thrift store, which made utensils and appliances fairly painless to acquire.  

Yikes. This is what you get when you don't go with the major competitors.

I ran into my first frugal trap with internet hardware at the thrift store. At $6 each, I cycled through 3 routers and 2 cable modems before saying 'Screw it," and buying new. This sucks because I lost my receipt for 2 of those, losing $14 in the process. Turns out, a new modem and router were $60, which is a necessary sacrifice for the faster speed of the latest peripherals. The biggest waste I had was two internet providers for the first month living here. I thought I'd fight the power by choosing the "local" internet provider called Frontier, who recently became independent from Verizon. They offered a $35 per month service, which proved to be slow as molasses diarrhea on a snowy hillock. It tested at 1.5Mbps, which meant laggy games and even Youtube and Amazon Prime Video were choppy. The very next morning, I cached in my moral chips and signed up for the Comcast Xfinity, the devil in the suit. Very unfrugally I had two internet connections for a month, and wasted the $35, PLUS the setup fees.

Ahh, much better. I wish there were another way...

I'm also learning the value of measure twice, order once. My bike was in need of a new rear wheel and brake set. The process has been frustrating. I'll get a new part, start working on the bike, only to learn that I need to order a new part. Amazon has been great in minimizing my wait, but the project that should have been an afternoon has been stretched out because I've had to return a few things because I didn't measure before ordering. For returns, I usually at least lose the cost of shipping, and my friends didn't have a few of the tools I needed, which lead to an unplanned $30 that won't make it into investments this month.

I leave you all with a picture of my fabulous living room!

Left to Right: dope couch - $100, heavy coffee table w/ drawer, mangy red armchair, glass-shelf tv stand - ALL FREE.

Games of 2016: Avril et Mai

The spring here in Seattle was off to a warm start in early April; lots of those distracting sunny days and wonderful-smelling flowers got me to abandon games for a full 2 days. Luckily, May brought a few gifts; a very anticipated game launch, and some chilling indoor weather.

April: Rollers of the Realm (PS4), DeadStar (PS4), StarFox Zero (Wii U), more Zelda: Wind Waker HD.

DeadStar: Your actual view is much more zoomed into one sector.

The blue carrier is in over its head with the base and alien ship on the left.

One of the free April PSN titles is DeadStar, a twin-stick space shooter that goes a little deeper than its contemporaries Geometry Wars and Super Stardust HD. Each map has two teams and a number of zones, with a base in the middle. Blue team and Red team both have their own bases, and there is a neutral AI that needs to be defeated to capture the other sector. Between fighting the AI or player-controlled enemy team, you can collect resources to upgrade your outposts in each 8-20 minute battle. The short soundtrack is great, and the game has been another hit in latest free PS+ titles!

Rollers of the Realm is a bizarre blend of pinball in a medieval setting, where the balls are characters with dialogue in pretty generic fantasy story. After bouncing around the board and collecting enough mana, each character gets a special attack, like the hunter summoning his eagles, which are smaller pinballs that do a little damage. The Knight's ability blocks the fall pits, and the healer allows you to resurrect lost balls (fallen allies.)

The Arwing transforms into this walker, which isn't bad...

Controlling the hover and attached robot is stupid, though.

StarFox Zero looks like an updated StarFox 64 if you're just looking at the main tv screen. There, you'll see that typical 3rd-person, behind-the-aircraft view as cool stuff flies by you. Then, your controller starts talking to you because your aiming sucks, and you look down...holy shit, what? This game has a very unique layout: you have a cockpit view through the Wii U gamepad, and the dynamic view shifting from tv to pad is disorienting at first, with a very high learning curve. Lots of people complain about this control scheme, and it seems that the currently-unintuitive cursor re-centering is the only tweak that the game needs. I say: Nintendo, keep your control scheme and don't give in!

May: Uncharted 4 (PS4)

Last shot. The plot of the Uncharted games usually only have a childish counterpart, like The Mummy movies or National Treasure. In UC4, Nathan Drake goes on a search for pirate treasure, finding clues and solving puzzles, dodging traps and climbing along the way. Nate's best friend, Sully, and his wife Elena have sizable roles in this game, but the newest character is Nate's brother Sam. Basically, Sam got in with the wrong people and you have to find $400m of buried treasure to bail him out. Until the latest 2 Tomb Raider games, Uncharted is always set apart by its technical features.

At first glance, the graphics aren't the absolute highest resolution available on the console, but after playing, you'll start to notice the motion capture, environment physics, and backgrounds are the best in the business. Each realtime cutscene is performed in earnest, without having to suffer Nicholas Cage, but you get the benefits of animated mayhem with the important parts of realism. That means the character gets thrown through walls and things blow up, but the stunts still look authentic. The gameplay : cutscene ratio feels like 50:50 in the first half of the game, but there are so many ohh shit! moments that action junkies will get their fill. I completed the story on medium in under 20 hours, and am now combing through a second time for collectibles. Since I plan on going for the platinum trophy, I have a 6-hour speedrun and a hardest-difficulty play-through waiting for me. Uncharted games are always worth the wait and price, though Amazon helped me out at $47.99 preorder.

Safari, mother@#$^, SA-FARRR-RI!

Cool it on the smoothies...

While rocking my codgery self back and forth in my arm chair, I noticed that Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony all announced their next game systems. Has it been that long already? Am I the only one who thinks the 3 companies should deliver with their current generation first?

Nintendo has been a-maz-ing about releasing updates in their franchise titles - HD Zelda games, an incredible Smash Brothers game, and my favorite Mario Kart by far. The Virtual Console is still going strong and because of that, we get a chance to gobble up the Metroid Prime Trilogy at a reasonable price. I feel like there were about 20 games on the Wii U that I cared about, and that seems really low for console content. To be honest, I think buying 20 games (via Craigslist, Amazon, and trading, of course) for a given game system justifies the cost of it. But, half of these magical titles are simply updates. Nintendo is really good at adding content and using their consoles' latest gimmick in these. For example, Wind Waker uses the Wii U pad screen for inventory and maps so you don't need to pause the game, and Mario Brothers Wii U uses the pad for players to insert helpful blocks, platforms and stun enemies while the other 4 players traverse the levels. These titles are really familiar, but have a fresh spin that only Nintendo can confidently deliver, but boy did I get burned in April. The new Legend of Zelda game is even being pushed back for the next Nintendo system. It feels like the company isn't putting up any resistance in defining the Wii U as a stepping stone, rather than its own distinct product. At least the titles all adequately use the hardware.

Boooooooooo!

XBox One has my favorite piece of technology that's under-utilized: the Kinect. The first half of the Wii's lifespan had pretty bad motion controls until they developed the Motion Plus, which added extra sensors and sensitivity. Kinect on the XBox one is impressive in its motion-sensing, works in low-light, and has great voice recognition. Configuring it to control your TV and sound system makes Amazon Prime Video and Netflix quite amazing. "Xbox Pause," happens to be a favorite. The facial recognition is badass in that you can sit in a decently dark room and it'll log you in, but the most impressive display of this is in the Just Dance games. The game supports up to 6 simultaneous dancers, and even has an achievement for smiling, which certainly puts the Kinect to work. My gripe is that such a small percentage of Xbox titles use the Kinect for more than the voice option, and some games that do have piss-poor implementation.

If I'm gonna rant about the current generation, I gotta shout out to Sony. The Dualshock 4 has abysmal battery life, which is a surprise when it's the 4th generation and have had such great predecessors. One great feature is piping the game's audio through your controllers' headphone ports. However, between this feature, the under-utilized touchpad and motion controls, the battery life is totally compromised. Also, the tops of the analog sticks rub off quite easily. Sony could use a page from Nintendo's book of having more developers make use of the hardware features. Even if it's a cheap gimmick, stick to your guns and legitimize, guys!


Either way, with the new generation having such few original titles and so far from reaching potential, I think Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft ought to cool it on the smoothies and give us more killer titles for existing systems.

Edit: Even if Nintendo is releasing Zelda on both the Wii U and the new system, I will be very unfrugal in getting the techier version and the system with it. Hypocritical? Yes. But it's Zelda, and by getting the console, my friends won't have to spend their money on one! Yeah...*cough*

Login screens need to move forward.

Whether it's 5 minutes to kill or the last 2 minutes until nuclear meltdown, we've all been stonewalled by logins. Everything requires an account now, and some these are completely useless. Pinterest is a prime example: you need an account just to browse pictures and other peoples' hobbies. Rullly? On the other hand, I'm glad my financial sites check the IP I logged in with and ask security questions. My main gripe is some of the unnecessary stress that passwords cause us.

My Outlook box at work demands I change my password every 3 months. I can understand executives wanting this feature, but when most of the company uses email in place of chat (to discuss team projects and customer orders,) the information just doesn't need that level of protection. As a matter of fact, between sick days and high turnover in the entry-level positions, a team having to wait for one person to get his or her password right could be a problem. For me, frequently changing passwords often causes the ohh shit, I need to check something before I need to go home, and forgot my password situation. This leads me to my password retrieval gripe.

Digging up or fixing your forgotten password is a nightmare. After your 3 failed attempts because you logged in standing up and your wrist was resting on CTRL, what's the next step? Call IT, which is already closed for the day.

Some sites will ask your security questions and personal info before either resetting the password, or triggering a reset password email. That is a good thing. Attention companies: automating password retrieval is the way to go! Having to call someone to get a password for your login is silly, unless you work somewhere with incredibly important data. However, even those places have the James Bond random number generator key chain thinggies that make the password reset call unnecessary.

This site gets it!

Also, I recently got burned for not knowing whether I had an account or not. I was applying for a new position within my company, and forgot my password. Now, I have 10 memorized passwords, which is probably more than the average Joe, but still less variety than I should. Anyway, I used the forgot password link, entered one of my 3 emails, and was rewarded with this.

Seriously, fuck off. If? I'd done this with 30 minutes before I had to head to work, and waited around like an asshole to know whether or not I'd already created an account under that particular email. I don't know if that's more or less infuriating than that 5-minute wait for the password reset email when you actually do have an account.

No one has screwed me over as much as Microsoft, though. My hotmail account was hacked 10 years ago, and there's no tech support number to call - in fact, someone took notice of this and posted a number as a Google result. I got halfway into the call when someone with an accent asked me for $69 and a credit card number. Bless that guy and fuck Microsoft for not having a normal retrieval process. They have a list of about 50 security questions to answer, with your personal information and even a open answer part with "some of the last subjects your emails were about." In theory, this is genius, but if someone hijacked your account and sent out 100 emails, then whatever you guess isn't going to work. And surprise! It didn't. Instead, some clever thief capitalized on Microsoft's inability to satisfy a common issue.

As much as I rail on Apple, I'm really glad that they've tied most of your logins to when you unlock your phone. Most of the frivolously protected sites/apps with logins being opened with a swipe works juuuuust fine.

I'm not saying get rid of logins altogether, and I'm not calling for sci-fi eye scanners on every device, but some companies need to realize just how much a pain in the ass their accounts are to access.

Games of 2016: Trophy train!

March was the month of PSN games. I completed the entire 5-part Tales of Monkey Island, as well as all of the offline Duke Nukem 3D content. Monkey Island is a point-and-click adventure game that you progress through by dialogue choices and providing items you find. The game follows Guybrush Threepwood in his pursuit of LeChuck, the "evil" pirate who isn't really that evil. The game is loaded with bad puns and really mild humor, as well as some decent challenges that are solved by listening carefully or watching closely.

Tales of Monkey Island's light-hearted humor never got me to laugh until the last game. You're in a cemetery with all these goofy headstones, and one says, "RIP Finnius, AKA "Shark Fighter", AKA Shark Bait."

Died from a bear attack."

The original Duke Nukem 3d is a classic, mostly famous for it's adult humor, wisecracks, and pop culture parodies.  However, the gameplay is solid and I want to shout out for level design. The original 3 10-level episodes take place in cityscapes that are very well-designed. There are bank blowups, shopping store shootouts, and alleyway assaults. All the levels are connected in a way that tells a story of where you're headed without mood-killing cutscenes, which is something that current FPSes can't seem to do. However, the expansions throw that great design out the window. One of them is a whole collection of Christmas levels dedicated to blowing up snowmen and elves that culminates in a really hard fight against Santa. The other replaces your weapons with water pistols and coconut launchers as you progress through a beach/Miami-themed episode. These both sucked.

These things creepy silent elves were
the source of many scared jumps

Regarding weapons, you're probably going to use mostly the shotgun and the ripper, which is a vertically-positioned chaingun. Some less-common-to-fps guns include the shrink ray, freeze cannon and expander, which makes enemies larger to the point where they explode.

Other than that, I've mostly been playing the Zelda Wind Waker HD version for Wii U. It's hard to believe this sleeper hit is from 2002, the cell-shaded graphics definitely provide some anti-aging, and the update to 1080p and new lighting and textures makes the game look RAD. If you play with the gamepad, you can hotswap your inventory, look at your maps, and use the MiiVerse without pausing the game. There's a lot of sailing empty ocean in this game, and checking MiiVerse messages and items while sailing enhances the experience dramatically.


My absolute favorite part of the MiiVerse, Nintendo's social networking, is that your in-game camera now lets Link take the most adorable selfies. At almost any point in the game, you can write a message in a bottle and chuck it in the water or on land, and other players will find it as they progress through their own story. There's a Nintendo Gallery in-game, where a man makes figurines out of certain pictures. It's completely optional, but the MiiVerse's sharing pics also makes collecting photographs of monsters and characters easier.

The contrast...

The Force Awakens thoughts *spoilers in episode VII*

Now that this movie is right around the corner for home release, I wanna Jabber-the-Hutt about it. I'd like to start off saying I loved this movie and have already posted on how wonderful a night it was seeing the opening IMAX screening. There are tons of theories out there, and don't let mine replace yours. I have avoided reading other opinions online and have some ideas I want out here, and maybe you can watch it on BluRay or whatever streaming service with these in mind. Feel free to disprove or confirm, though I really want to keep my own ideas and avoid spoilers for sequels.

My knowledge of outside-of-movie cannon is very limited; I haven't even watched the Clone Wars cartoon, which I hear is dy-no-mite!

I think the title refers to Finn. How do you make it through all the military training and suddenly have remorse? Okay, maybe it's his first mission, but how is a sewage specialist assigned to ground combat? I didn't get the impression that the First Order was desperate for soldiers. I think that someone orchestrated that, uhh, career shift so that the Force would awaken inside of Finn in the form of his sympathy.

Where would Finn have gotten the ability to use the Force? Maybe Leia Organa and Lando Calrissian hooked up. We don't know the rules, nor timelines of these relationships in that universe, and neither of the two smugglers seem particularly faithful. Also, if Anakin Skywalker struggled with the light and dark sides of the force, having grandchildren on different sides of the spectrum makes sense.

Rey is too obvious to be the next jedi, and the series would be much more clever with this distraction. What if the next movie starts with Luke saying, "Where the hell is Finn?" "Or, who the hell are you?" or something similar? What if Luke became super bitter and starts training Rey as a sith? It would greatly contrast the chemistry Finn and Rey have if they turned into bitter enemies. Even better if they were reluctant to fight, and the two ended up softening or eliminating the Jedi-Sith rivalry.

No matter how the series turns out, I'll love it. The new cast feels young and fresh, and is a pleasure to watch. It's really nice to get this series made by fans of Star Wars, and I really like what I've seen. There's the added bonus of no-risk because people will pay shitloads of money regardless...if JJ Abrams wants to pull the wool over our eyes for a sweet-ass secret, then more power to him. I look forward to surprises, and will avoid trailers and teasers and advertising for the next movie as well.